Exploring e-maturity in Italian local governments: empirical results from a three-step latent class analysis
| Author | Luca Tangi,Mara Soncin,Tommaso Agasisti,Giuliano Noci |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523211012752 |
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Exploring e-maturity
in Italian local
governments: empirical
results from a three-step
latent class analysis
Luca Tangi , Mara Soncin ,
Tommaso Agasisti and Giuliano Noci
Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Abstract
This article undertakes a quantitative and holistic approach to frame a model of e-
maturity in local governments, defined as the extent to which technologies permeate
public service delivery. Moreover, the study adds evidence on the performance asso-
ciated with different levels of e-maturity. In so doing, we collect survey data from 814
Italian local governments and integrate it with secondary sources. We propose a new
angle for assessing e-maturity at the local government level, where the novel approach
is the categorisation of public services on the basis of their final users. The application
of a latent class analysis shows that the level of e-maturity is quite limited among Italian
local governments and that most of them tend to prioritise government-to-business
rather than government-to-citizen services in their digitisation process. A high level of
e-maturity is associated with greater effectiveness rather than efficiency.
Points for practitioners
•When assessing e-maturity, municipalities should treat differently Government to
Citizen and Government to Business services.
•Currently, municipalities are focused more on the digitization of Government to
Business services.
Corresponding author:
Luca Tangi, Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Via
Raffaele Lambruschini 4/b, 20156 Milano, Italy.
Email: luca.tangi@polimi.it
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
!The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/00208523211012752
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2023, Vol. 89(1) 76–94
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
•Socio-economic and environmental factors have a partial effect on e-maturity. The
size of the municipality and the income per capita are the most significant indicators.
•E-maturity raises effectiveness without a clear effect on efficiency. Only when reaching
a fully accomplished e-maturity a slight effect on municipalities’ expenditures can be
detected.
Keywords
e-government, e-maturity, empirical study, local government, performance, service
delivery
Introduction
Since the early appearance of information and communication technology (ICT),
public sector scholars started looking for a proper way to assess digital maturity
(hereafter, e-maturity), which has been defined as the extent to which a public
organisation is using digital technologies for managing and delivering public serv-
ices (Layne and Lee, 2001). Despite the increasing body of academic research on
models for assessing e-maturity and identifying its driving factors, there is no clear
pattern emerging from literature (Andersen et al., 2020). Moreover, scholars
started questioning the impact of ICT on organisational performance, in terms
of both efficiency and effectiveness (Budding et al., 2018; Nam, 2019). Efficiency is
defined as the ability to minimise inputs while maximising outputs, whereas effec-
tiveness deals with the quality of service deployed.
So far, two main challenges have impeded scholars in reaching consensus on the
aforementioned topics: (1) identifying a way to assess e-maturity on a large scale
(Coursey and Norris, 2008; Scholta et al., 2019); and (2) identifying proper per-
formance indicators, especially when looking at efficiency (Budding et al., 2018).
This article adds evidence that enriches the current body of knowledge on both
issues. First, it offers a new lens for looking at e-maturity that takes into consid-
eration the end user of a public service (Yildiz, 2007) and explores the environ-
mental and socio-economic factors predicting e-maturity. Second, it investigates
the relationship between e-maturity and different sets of indicators.
In so doing, we rely on a survey distributed to all Italian local governments
(hereafter, also ‘municipalities’), collecting 814 responses (around 10% of Italian
local governments). We propose a measurement model based on a latent class
analysis (LCA) through which we contribute to filling a gap in quantitative studies
on ICT in the public sector (Wirtz and Daiser, 2018). Finally, we test the presence
of a relationship between e-maturity, socio-economic factors, environmental fac-
tors, efficiency and perceived effectiveness.
The remainder of this article is organised as follows. The second section reviews
the literature in the field. The third section illustrates the methodology. The fourth
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Tangi et al.
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